The Seeley Lectures

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"Altar" with Zodiacal Frieze and Heads of the Twelve Gods

 

The 2026 Seeley Lectures will be delivered by Professor Caroline Humfress of the University of St. Andrews. 

The lecture series is entitled ‘Constitutional Imaginaries, Ancient and Modern’, and will consist of the following instalments: 

  • Lecture 1: Tuesday, May 19:

‘Lesser Commonwealths’? Politics and the Associative Phenomenon.

  • Lecture 2: Thursday, May 21:

Ancient Constitutionalism and Private Associations.

  • Lecture 3: Tuesday, May 26:

Constitutional Imaginaries: (Late) Ancient vs. (Early) Modern.

  • Lecture 4: Thursday May 28:

From Social Contract(ing) to Societal Constitutionalism?

All Lectures will commence at 17:00pm in the McCrum Lecture Theatre, Bene’t Street, Cambridge.

 

 

The John Robert Seeley Lectures are given biennially by a distinguished visitor to Cambridge on a topic in Political Thought and its History.

The Seeley Lectures are generously supported by the Cambridge University Press, and are subsequently published by them.  

The 2024 Seeley Lectures were presented by Professor Eric Nelson (Harvard) titled 'Democracy as Meritocracy: Post-Classical Greek and the Early-Modern Rehabilitation of Popular Rule'.

Information on other past lectures can be found in our Seeley Lecture Archive.